The Way the World Ends
by Kansas42
Summary: Any minute now, everything will be fine. Tag to When All Hell Breaks Loose, part 1.


Author's Notes: I know there are going to be about 7 million of these tags, but oh well. And I know everybody uses T. S. Eliot's, "The Hollow Men" but . . . oh well. Sometimes, you just have to give it your own spin.

Disclaimer: Supernatural is property of Eric Kripke and not me, no matter how much I might pretend otherwise.

"The Way The World Ends"

_This is the way the world ends._

_This is the way the world ends._

_This is the way the world ends._

_Not with a bang but with a whimper._

And then _what the HELL_ because this is really, fantastically, _not_ the time to be thinking of poetry. Dean's not sure when that time is, exactly, but right now he's holding his brother, his bleeding, dying (_dead_) brother, and so this is definitely not the time to be wondering who wrote those lines.

_Sam would know_.

Yeah, Sam _would_ know, but Sam's not up to fielding poetry questions just at the moment. "Come on, Sam," Dean says, but Sam's not answering no matter how hard Dean screams. His brother isn't answering because his brother is gone, just like his dad's gone, just like his mom. Sam's not answering because he's—

No.

"Sam!"

Dean's shaking his brother, staring intently into his face, at his eyes, half-mast and glazed because—no. Any minute now, Sam will blink those eyes, and his breath will come back in harsh, painful gasps. He'll say Dean's name and Dean will laugh; he'll say, "You scared me, you stupid, dumb sonofabitch." And Sam will wheeze something back, in between gasping and coughing up blood; Sam will say something inevitably geeky about the redundancy of calling someone stupid _and_ dumb. Then Dean will come back with something totally witty and Sam will try to ruin the moment by saying he loves him, and Dean will glare at Sam and remind him firmly that they weren't doing goodbyes because nobody was dying.

_Nobody's dying, so no one's last words will be about getting extra onions and yelling PIE out the window._

Sam will open his eyes and Dean will say, "Stay with me" and Bobby will come up after shooting that sonofabitch dead. Then they'll drag Sam into the Impala and drive recklessly fast because they gotta get Sam to the hospital; man, he needed to be there _yesterday_. And yeah, things will be tense, but they'll make it, they'll _make_ it,and the doctors will wheel him off into surgery and do whatever it is they do.

Dean will pace around in the waiting room with three or four other terrified people, and Bobby will try to say something, something simple in that practical Bobby way, and then the doctor will come out and there will be one of those pauses before the doctor finally says that everything will be fine. There will be a lot of medical jargon that Dean won't be patient enough to listen to, and then he'll be sprinting to Sam's room, and to hell with whatever the doctor might think. Sam's eyes will be closed but he'll wake up once Dean comes in and then they'll spend the next couple minutes having one of those chick flick moments they pretend not to have.

Dean will flash back to the djinn, and he'll say, "For a minute there, I thought I lost you."

And Sam will remember too. He'll say, "For a minute there, you did."

And that's what's gonna happen, any minute now. Any minute. It'll be "jerk" and "bitch" and warnings on turning your back before the enemy's _dead. Dead,_ dammit, not just down but _dead_, 100 never coming back, not even as a zombie _dead_. And Sammy will roll his eyes and they'll be driving in the Impala and any minute now, any minute, everything will be _fine_.

Any minute . . . but it's just not happening that way, because Sam's (_no_) because Sam's (_NO_) because (_this is the way the world ends_)

and it's not fair. It's not _fair_!

"Sammy! _Sammy!_" Dean's screaming and shaking him as hard as he can but there's nothing. Just nothing.

Because he's dead. Sam's dead.

"No," Dean whispers. "No." _I'm supposed to save you. I'm GOING to save you._

_You can't save me, Dean._

"I can. I can. I—"

_Can't. I can't, because you're dead._

"No," Dean says again, desperately. "Please, Sam, please. Don't go, please. Please, _please—"_

_But Sam can't hear your prayers anymore because he's dead. He's dead, he's dead. Sam's deaddeaddead._

"No." Yes. "No." YES.

Sam's—

"_NO_!" Dean screams. "_NO! NO!_"

. . .yes

because this is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. This is the world ends.

Not with a bang or whimper.

Just Sam.

-Fin

AN: Reviews are love. Or at least highly appreciated.


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